276 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 13, 1905. 



cose ; that combe may be artificiallj formed by furnishing the bees a 

 foundation; that this foundation maybe adulterated, and that par- 

 affin is one of the chief adulterants. 



In the reward card which Mr. Root sends out, and which he says 

 in his letter he has "published for the last 15 years," he still further 

 safeguards himself with conditions. The reward is only for one " who 

 will furnish evidence that comb honey has been manufactured, filled 

 with honey and capped by machinery, or who will furnish information 

 of anyplace where comb honey is manufactured by machinery — in 

 either case the product imitated so closely as not to be told from the 

 genuine.'' 



Comb honey sold " in the frame," of which The Tribune made no 

 mention, is uniformly pure in this country. Nevertheless, honey- 

 malsers should appreciate that it can only remain so by constant 

 watchfulness. They should welcome instead of criticise any public 

 discussion of the subject. The art of adulteration is on the increase 

 in this country, and is aided by every new discovery in the sciences. 

 As Dr. Wiley says: 



"The true friend of the apiary interests of the country is not he 

 who shuts his eyes to patent adulterations, but rather he who recog- 

 nizes facts, even unpleasant, and who, having seen the enormity of 

 the extent of honey-adulteration, supports the labors of those who seek 

 to detect and prevent it." 



Bee-keepers as a class are an intelligent set of men (and women), 

 and as such they are not likely to close their eyes to facts, unpleasant 

 though the facts may be ; but they do desire that what are given as 

 facts shall not directly or by inference give impressions that are false. 

 One trouble in the case is a lack of thorough knowledge on the subject. 

 The proof of that lack lies in the phraseology used in some parts of 

 the discussion, and also in the arguments used. In all fairness it 

 should be said that The Tribune has been no doubt misled by state- 

 ments made by those supposed to be good authorities, which state- 

 ments would probably not have been made just as they were by any 

 fully familiar with the entire facts. 



Even with this admission it is a little difficult to admit the rele- 

 vancy of a passage like the following : 



That the honey-comb, as well as the contents of its comb, may be 

 more or less artificial is a well established fact. Dr. Wiley speaks of 

 15 patents that have been issued for the manufactureof artificial comb 

 and comb foundation. One is described as follows: "The comb is 

 made complete of a web of paper, cloth or suitable material, which, 

 after moulding, is saturated with melted wax. The excess of coating 

 is thrown off by a centrifugal machine. The advantage arising from 

 my invention, says its author, ' is that combs constructed accordingly 

 can be filled and emptied repeatedly without breaking, the honey be- 

 ing extracted by means of a centrifugal machine, or as commonly 

 done with other honey-combs when it is desired to use them a second 

 time.' " 



Another patented method, according to the inventor, will produce 

 a comb in every respect resembling the natural comb built by bees. 

 "This comb," says the inventor, " may be placed in the hive and will 

 be used by the bees, thus saving the insects the labor of building 

 combs and causing them to spend the time otherwise appropriated to 

 this work in the gathering and storing of honey." 



It is in these comb foundations, these artificial layers of wax, 

 which some apiarists place in the center of the frame for the bees to 

 build on, that opportunities are offered for adulteration. 



Now what has that to do with the case in hand? Supposing its 

 relevancy, what about its reasonableness 3 Imagine " a web of paper 

 or cloth " moulded in the form of a complete comb ! Pretty thin cloth 

 would be needed to be no thicker than the thin cell-walls of a honey- 

 comb. And how could it possibly be so molded? Would there not 

 be some danger of tearing the cloth before it could be stretched or 

 squeezed into the right form? Then when the complete form is 

 moulded, it is to be saturated with melted wax ! Can you imagine 

 such a structure being dipped in wax hot enough to saturate it with- 

 out the collapsing of the cell-walls? And suppose there is no such 

 collapsing from the immersion in hot wax, in what shape would the 

 fabric be when " the excess of coating is thrown off by a centrifugal 

 machine?" 



All this sounds very funny to a bee-keeper, but very likely thou- 

 sands have soberly read it in The Tribune without seeing anything 

 funny about it. Can The Tribune or Dr. Wiley furnish a sample of 

 anything of the kind? The fact that a claim has been made for it is 

 not greatly to the point. A lunatic may conceive any absurdity and 

 claim a patent from the patent office. 



The second patented method produces " a comb in every respect 

 resembling the natural comb built by the bees "—note well, " accord- 

 ing to Hie iniimtor." It is safe to say there would be no such resem- 

 blance " according to " Dr Wiley or " according to " the editor of The 

 Tribune. Equally safe to say that neither of them have ever seen any- 

 thing of the kind, nor any one else. 



Prof. M. A. Scovell is reported as saying: "No. 103, labeled 

 ' Choice Comb Honey,' is another instance of the sale of comb honey 

 which is a mechanical mixture of the comb with glucose." That 

 probably has reference to honey in glass, a piece of comb honey being 



put in and the jar then filled with glucose. Several other cases are 

 reported that seem to be of the same kind. That sort of fraud is well 

 known, but what has that to do with adulterated comb honey ? So far 

 as has ever yet been reported, the piece of honey put in is genuine 

 comb honey, the only fraud in the case being the glucose that is 

 poured around it. 



Some pains is taken to prove thai; ijeeswax is adulterated, a thing 

 well known, but, "according to Dr. Wiley, no comb foundations have 

 been obtained by his men in the United States which were found to be 

 adulterated, but he publishes a letter from a Canadian chemist which 

 shows that it can be done." It doesn't need a letter from a Canadian 

 chemist to show that foundation may be made of adulterated wax, any 

 more than it needs a foreign letter to show that sugar and sand may 

 be mixed, but it is a compliment to United States manufacturers of 

 foundation that Prof. Wiley has not found that they have been guilty 

 of adulteration. 



The passage that has the most direct bearing on the case comes 

 earlier in the editorial, and is as follows : 



When Mr. Root said that this statement " is absolutely untrue," 

 he was no doubt unaware that it was founded on various government 

 reports. That some honey is adulterated in the comb is a fact stated 

 in Part 6 of Bulletin No. 13, issued by the Department of Agriculture, 

 Division of Chemistry, Feb. 23, 1892. As a result of a thorough anal- 

 ysis Dr. H. W. Wiley, chief chemist of the department, in that re- 

 port said: " Many samples of comb honey containing only glucose 

 have come under my observation, but in all these cases the combs, 

 presumably after the separation of the honey by centrifugal machine, 

 had been placed in glass bottles and the glucose then added. I have 

 never yet found a sample of comb honey, sold in the frame, which was 

 artificial, except in the use of comb foundation." 



In The Tribune's article no mention at all was made of comb 

 honey sold " in the frame." The exact words used were, " honey is 

 also adulterated in the comb," which is accomplished, as Dr. Wiley 

 explains, by expelling the honey from the cells by means of whirling 

 it about at a high rate of speed, and then placing the empty comb in 

 bottles where the glucose is added. 



The idea of filling an empty comb with glucose by plunging the 

 emptycombina bottle of glucose makes a bee-keeper gasp. "Pre- 

 sumably." By the same token, " presumably " Dr. Wiley never found 

 a piece of spurious comb honey in a bottle of glucose. " Presumably " 

 it was genuine comb honey surrounded by glucose, or simply a piece 

 of honey-comb immersed in glucose. 



Emphasis is laid upon the point that no mention is made of comb 

 honey sold " in the frame." But is it supposable that the genius 

 which could produce a piece of comb honey out of the frame not dis- 

 tinguiehable from the genuine would balk at the task of putting it in 

 the frame? And whatever may have been said, or not said in the 

 former article in the editorial before us, the general reader will find 

 ground for believing that spurious comb honey may be found " in the 

 frame," when he reads in a passage already quoted that it is in these 

 artificial combs " which some apiarists place in the center of the frame 

 for the bees to build on that opportunities are offered for adulteration. " 



Yet suppose that The Tribune knows that all section honey, or as 

 he puts it, that all honey " in the frame "is genuint, when he says 

 " honey is also adulterated in the comb," whatever reservations may 

 be in his own mind, the impression made on the mind of the general 

 reader will be such as to make him conclude that any sample of comb 

 honey may be adulterated. 



In the passage quoted. The Tribune, speaking of Mr. Root's JIOOO 

 offer says, "Such specifications are of course prohibitive." In the 

 light of what has been advanced by The Tribune, let us see how much 

 there is prohibitive about them. There is a method which " will pro- 

 duce a comb in every respect resembling the natural comb built by the 

 bees." The material used is not specified, but if such comb can he 

 made of beeswax it can be made wholly of paraffiqe. Then "placing 

 the empty comb in bottles where the glucose is added, '^ we have the 

 comb honey entirely artificial, complete all but the sealing, and surely 

 The Tribune would not ask Mr. Root to accept as a marketable article 

 a sample ot comb honey not capped over. True, it is not " in the 

 frame," but the specifications do not require that it shall be " in the 

 frame." The specifications were meant to be prohibitive, are prohibi- 

 tive as is proven by the fact that no one has ever yet been able to lift 

 the reward, but there is nothing unfairly prohibitive in them, as The 

 Tribune will find it it can " deliver the goods." 



Among the bee-keeping readers of The Tribune there may be 

 those who will vote the editor lacking in intelligence, and some per- 

 haps will call him dishonest in his statements. There is no proof that 

 he is either. His position is suflicient warrant for the belief that he 

 is a man of exceptional ability and intelligence, sincerely desirous to 

 get at the truth, and perhaps the last man to be willing to do an in- 



